- The EU will deduct €200 million from Hungary's account
- Hungary's migrant policy will remain unchanged and illegals will be sent to Brussels
- The EU and Orban's Hungary have been at loggerheads for a long time
The EU will deduct €200 million from Hungary's account
On Wednesday, the European Union (EU) started recovering several hundred million euros from Hungary. The procedure comes after the Hungarian government flatly refused to pay a hefty fine to the Community for a possible breach of the bloc's asylum rules on migrants.
In June this year, the EU's highest court ordered Hungary to pay as much as €200 million in fines for failing to admit asylum seekers. The court also imposed an additional fine of €1 million for each day of non-compliance[1].
The European Court of Justice (CJEU) described Hungary's action as an "unprecedented and extremely serious breach of EU law," but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban took a very different view, calling the court's decision "outrageous and unacceptable."
As the tense situation remains deadlocked, the European Commission (EC) has now launched a special procedure to deduct the €200 million fine imposed by the ECJ on Hungary from this account. Budapest missed the first payment deadline at the end of August, and the executive sent a second payment request with a deadline of September 17.
As this second request was also ignored, the Commission said on Wednesday that it would launch a so-called 'cash offset' procedure to deduct the €200 million fine from Hungary's share of the EU budget. The EC says Brussels will withhold the country's money from common funds that would otherwise go to Hungary. The mechanism will also re-examine various financial packages that were expected to be disbursed to Hungary in the coming weeks.
"From today, we move to the reimbursement phase. Theoretically we can examine any payments, nothing is excluded, but obviously it will take some time, we need to identify what payments are coming in and identify the identity of the payments that can be absorbed under the respective fine. So we will now deduct €200 million from future payments to Hungary from the EU budget," Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said on Wednesday.
B. Ujvari also said that the Commission has already sent the first payment request for the daily fines, amounting to €93 million. The Hungarian authorities will have at least 45 days to make this payment[2].
As a reminder, Hungary has already been fined a record amount of around €21 billion from the Cohesion and Recovery Funds for breaches of the rule of law cited by Brussels, which means that this amount is also still frozen.
Hungary's migrant policy will remain unchanged and illegals will be sent to Brussels
For years, the Hungarian government has taken a firm stance on migrants entering the country.
A few years ago, the government ordered the erection of razor-wire fences along the southern borders with Serbia and Croatia and the creation of a couple of transit zones to hold asylum seekers.
In 2020, the CJEU found that Hungary had restricted people's access to international protection, unlawfully detained asylum seekers and denied them the right to stay in the country while their applications were being processed.
Shortly after this decision, the transit zones were closed in 2020, but this was not enough for the Commission, which continued to argue that Budapest should comply more closely. That is when the talk of fines amounting to hundreds of millions of euros started.
In addition, after the COVID-19 pandemic, Hungary adopted a new law whereby asylum seekers traveling to Belgrade or Kyiv had to apply for a travel permit at the embassies there before entering Hungary, and only on their return could they make a new application in Hungary. This has angered Brussels again.
In early 2022, the EC submitted a second request to the court, arguing that Hungary had not taken all the necessary measures to comply with the 2020 decision.
"This non-compliance, manifested by a deliberate avoidance of the application of the EU's common policy in its entirety, constitutes an unprecedented and grave breach of EU law," reads the CJEU's published judgment.
Regarding the ruling, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government argued that the 2020 ruling was irrelevant because the country had already closed so-called "transit zones" and tightened rules to prevent future asylum seekers.
"The decision is outrageous and unacceptable. It seems that illegal migrants are more important to Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens," Orban wrote on Facebook.
V. Orban promised his supporters back in 2021 to "maintain the current arrangements for asylum seekers, even if the European Court of Justice orders them to change them".
He has kept his word. Earlier, Gergely Gulyas, an official in the Prime Minister's Office, confirmed that the government would not comply with the CJEU's ruling and said that Hungary could deliver the migrants by bus to Brussels.
"If Brussels wants illegal migrants, Brussels can have them. We will give everyone a one-way ticket as long as the EU makes impossible our ambition to stop migration at the external border", he said.
At a recent press conference in the capital, Budapest, Hungarian Secretary of State Bence Retvari also claimed that the EU wants to force Hungary to let "illegal migrants" across its borders and said the country would "voluntarily, free of charge, offer a one-way trip to Brussels to these illegal migrants". Mr Retvari said that such a transfer would be carried out "following the implementation of a European procedure" but did not elaborate on the status of the asylum seekers before they were transported to Brussels.
The Hungarian Prime Minister himself considers illegal migration to be an "existential issue" facing the EU, along with gender equality, employment and security.
The EU and Orban's Hungary have been at loggerheads for a long time
However, Hungary's position on migrants is not the only source of disagreement with the EU. The conflict has several causes, including the state of democracy, the rule of law, the judiciary, media freedom and human rights.
The EU has often criticized the Hungarian government for fundamental breaches of democratic principles, especially after Prime Minister Orban and his Fidesz party came to power in 2010. Since then, the country has undergone a series of changes that the EU says undermine the rule of law. This includes changes to the constitution that have increased the executive's power and weakened the judiciary's independence, as well as restrictions on civil liberties and human rights.
Hungary's moves to reform the media are also worrying Brussels bureaucrats. Orban and his party monitor and control much of the country's media, which, from the EU's point of view, threatens freedom of the press. As a result, various EU institutions have repeatedly accused the Hungarian government of trying to restrict free speech and strengthen government control over the media.
In the past, Hungary has also been accused of misuse of EU funds and abusive corruption schemes. The EU institutions have moved to restrict EU funds to Hungary until the country addresses these problems.
The issue of LGBT rights also exacerbates the conflict between Hungary and the EU. According to the EU, Hungary's policies contradict fundamental European values and legal norms. The conflict went deeper in 2021, when the Hungarian government passed a law banning the dissemination of "LGBT content" to minors. The law stipulates that information deemed to promote homosexuality or gender reassignment cannot be shown in schools or in the media.
The EU and its institutions have strongly criticized the law. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called it a "disgrace" and said it contradicted EU values, including respect for human dignity, equality, and human rights. The law has led the EU to initiate legal action against Hungary, including infringement procedures to force Hungary to repeal or amend the law to align it with EU law.
Brussels has also recently criticized Hungary on the issue of aid to Ukraine. Hungary's approach to the war is at odds with the EU's overall position. Prime Minister Orban often emphasizes a neutral approach and seeks to maintain the closest possible ties with Russia.
